Tuesday 10 January 2012

Double Whammy: MoE gets 8%, so MinDef "Pokes Eye" ...

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“We are not blaming the education system.
But we hope they will be able to take the
necessary measures to improve the situation,”
- Zahid Hamidi

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RAWANG: In a shocking discovery by the Defence Ministry, about 8% of 6,667 National Service trainees from 30 selected camps were found to be unable to read and write.

The findings were based on a pilot project using a module called I-Smart conducted on the third batch of NS trainees in August last year.

“The objective of the programme was to ensure that the trainees had basic reading and writing skills,” said Defence Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi at the Templer Park national service camp here yesterday.
~ 8% of National Service trainees cannot read or write


RAWANG: The Defence Ministry had relied on the free online Google Translate for the English version of its official website, which resulted in the many mistakes found on the site.

“We have corrected the mistakes and translations are no longer done that way. “It is now done manually,” Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said here yesterday.

The ministry's website had published translations such as “clothes that poke eye”, a literal translation of pakaian yang menjolok mata, which in actual fact means revealing clothes in Bahasa Malaysia.

Others included
“collared shirts and tight Malay civet berbutang three”, which, in Malay, is berkolar baju Melayu cekak musang berbutang tiga.

Another was the brief summary of the ministry's history on the website, which read:
“After the withdrawal of British army, the Malaysian Government take drastic measures to increase the level of any national security threat”.

~Mindef blames Google Translate for ‘poke-eye’ blunder